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10 Ways to Promote Your Bridge Club

A decline in numbers is a common complaint for many bridge clubs all over the world, especially clubs that might have been small to begin with.

There’s no reason why your club numbers should have to suffer when there are great ways out there to promote your club, increase your reach and draw new players to the game – including people who have never heard about bridge before.

Here are 10 practical suggestions for ways to promote your bridge club.

1. Have a Website

Most people who want to find information on a club will visit the home page, but yet a lot of smaller clubs don’t officially have one. Any modern bridge club should have a basic website at the very least – and through platforms like WordPress, Blogger and Weebly, it won’t cost anything but some time to create one.

A website is also a great place to list things like events, bridge videos, lessons and blog posts that can draw in more readership.

2. Host Open Events

Bridge events shouldn’t be exclusive to bridge players. Host regular “open events” that are geared towards people who have never played before and introduce them to the game. It can also help to advertise these open events outside of where you would normally place ads to get people who aren’t generally players to show up!

3. Broadcast the Game

Bridge viewing is getting bigger, and it can only get more popular as more clubs sign up to stream.

Platforms like Twitch.tv and YouTube allow for live broadcasts or recorded uploads. Set up a few cameras or webcams and start broadcasting your bridge game online for other players to watch.

Some streaming platforms allows for an additional “donation” tab where viewers can contribute to keep the game going.

4. List Your Bridge Events

Promoting a bridge event is the same as promoting a rock-and-roll gig. If nobody in town knows about tonight’s gig, nobody is going to show up to it. Promote your club by listing bridge events online – and promoting them beyond your own website. (Free classified websites can be great for this, and are read by many people who don’t know how to play yet.)

5. Advertise on BBO

Bridge Base Online sees thousands of hits every day from all over the world. If you have a big game coming up, notable news from your club or a product you want to promote, you can speak to BBO about advertising to a large chunk of the bridge-playing community.

6. Incorporate Online Games

Many older and smaller bridge clubs haven’t discovered the wonder of online bridge just yet. If playing your game online is uncharted territory for your club, now is one of the best times to take advantage of what’s available online. Schedule a regular game online – and invite people from outside your club to participate.

7. Club Outreach Programs

Charity allows your bridge club to do some good for your local community – and club outreach programs can also allow for your club to achieve a lot of reach.

Start a program to teach bridge to disadvantaged youths in the area, teach bridge in prisons, teach bridge to the local police station. In fact, teach bridge wherever you find the opportunity.

Some bridge clubs can also get involved through special events and “fund drives” for causes in their community.

8. Subscription Newsletters

Surprisingly, a lot of bridge clubs out there don’t have newsletters – and miss out on a great opportunity as a result. It’s easy to start a newsletter if everyone clubs together, and you can even hire a professional proofreader to check over each monthly (or bimonthly or quarterly) newsletter before it’s sent out.

People love newsletters because it’s regular (and hopefully interesting).

If you’d like it sent to their inbox, services like MailChimp can help you set up an online mailing list.

9. Social Media

Social media is meant to be social. Don’t keep your correspondence to e-mail only. Set up a few pages on popular social media networks and participate in bridge discussion threads as a club. This also allows for people to find you, and some social media platforms (like Facebook) allow for Sponsored Advertising that can advertise your club to everyone who doesn’t know about it yet.

10. Combining Forces

There are clubs out there for almost everything you can think of.

Cooking clubs, book clubs, wartime reconstruction clubs, board game clubs, trading card clubs… If you’re worried about your membership numbers, get in touch with some other local clubs in the area and find out if you can hold a collaborative event – or if they would like to host a bridge event amongst their members.

Combined forces is one of the most powerful forms of promotion out there, and it can hook a lot of newly-interested members


Comments

One response to “10 Ways to Promote Your Bridge Club”

  1. Anonymous

    the reason bridge is failing is because the people that play r so slow and ignorant the slow play rather than CLAIM have no respect for the game if it takes longer than 30 seconds there is a problem and if u say sumthing like I do well look out how dare say anything about them and there play and now the fught is on school ur old players and tell then its not good to play like that simple but im sure most of the old bridge players will scoff at u